You’d think one patent-infringement lawsuit would be enough, but Ryan Seacrest’s iPhone case startup clearly didn’t get the message after its last courtroom tangle with BlackBerry.
The new Typo Keyboard for the iPhone 6 was supposed to have fixed any infringement issues committed by its predecessor, but that is apparently not the case. This week BlackBerry filed another lawsuit against Typo, claiming the case maker “slavishly copied” its keyboard design “down to the smallest detail.”
“Just as they did with the Typo Keyboard, Defendants have again copied numerous proprietary BlackBerry designs and patents in the Typo2 Keyboard,” states the complaint, first obtained by The Hollywood Reporter. “The Typo2 Keyboard still blatantly copies BlackBerry’s iconic keyboard trade dress designs that have been embodied in numerous BlackBerry smartphones from the 2007 BlackBerry 8800 to the current Q10 and Classic models.”
BlackBerry already won an injunction barring the sales of the first-gen Typo Keyboard for the iPhone 5, and Typo was recently forced to pay $860,000 in damages for selling the product anyway.
The $99 Typo2 is still listed for sale on the company’s website, but there’s no telling how long that will last.
I got to play with the Typo2 at International CES in Las Vegas last month, and while reps were quick to point out that the design had evolved, it still looked pretty much the same to me — that is, exactly like a BlackBerry keyboard.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
